stumble backwards into love's path
by Terapsina
Summary: "Hey, watch where you're-" she turns around to grumble and her words stumble to a stop as soon as her eyes connect with deep dark mischievous ones. The person that ran into her is a little taller than her, a shining white wig framing the face and is wearing a long, expensive looking button down coat. She's also probably the most gorgeous girl Clary has ever seen in her life. "…hi."


**Disclamer** : Not mine. Neither the show nor the books, though this is definitely based on the show (I haven't even read the books). I'm not making any money off this either.

 **AN** : I watched like half the first season of Shadowhunters when it first came out but lost interest because there were a lot of things that drove me mad, but then seeing Maia and Malec on tumblr lured me back and I caught up.

Now you'd think that would mean it's them that I'd write for, but unfortunately I like to fix things and Malec is PERFECT, while I can't quite settle on who I ship Maia with (Saia is more cute, but Jaia is more fun). And I shipped Clizzy like crazy the first time around (and the second time around) and THEM I really wish I could fix.

So here is how their meeting would have gone if it was up to me.

*o0O0o*  
* **stumble backwards into love's path** *  
*o0O0o*

Clary backs away from the van twisting her head to the side to get a different perspective of her work when someone rams into her with their shoulder.

"Hey, watch where you're-" she immediately turns around to grumble and her words stumble to a stop as soon as her eyes connect with deep dark, mischievous ones. The person that ran into her is a little taller than her, a shining white wig framing the face and is wearing a long, expensive looking button down coat. She's also probably the most gorgeous girl Clary has ever seen in her _life._ "…hi."

"Hello." The girl smiles, something fascinated flashing across her face for a brief second and her red lips pulling into a wide attractive smile. "You have the sight?"

"What?" Clary asks a little breathless, her face twisting in confusion.

"Oh, nothing." She says but then her smile turns a little amused. "You know you're the one who stepped into my way without watching, right?"

Clary feels a blush rising across her cheeks and it's only half from embarrassment. "Sorry."

"No es nada, a pretty girl stopping me in my tracks is nothing to be sorry for."

"I-" Clary says not actually sure how to answer.

"Izzy!" A tall young man calls from behind the girl's shoulder. "We have a job to do, what are you doing?"

"Coming!" The girl whose name is apparently Izzy says back loudly but doesn't take her eyes off Clary for a lingering moment. "I'm Isabelle Lightwood. If you figure your sight out, look me up."

Then she turns around in one swift and graceful twist of heels and moves away.

Clary stays frozen in place, her mind a whirlwind of confusion. "What was that?"

"Who were you talking to?" Simon's voice comes from beside her. She hadn't even noticed when he walked over.

"What?" She looks at him confused. "The girl?"

"What girl?" He says, eyes furrowing in worry behind his glasses. "There wasn't a girl here, it looked like you were talking to empty air. Are you alright? Maybe you should come sit down."

"No." Clary says. "Look, she's right… there."

She points toward the club, but there's only the anonymous crowd waiting to be let into the Pandemonium now. The girl must have already been inside.

Suddenly more curious and confused than anything else she shrugs out of her jacket and passes it over to her best friend. "Wait here, I'll be right back."

"No, Clary. Clary!" Simon shouts from behind her but Clary's already marching toward the club in determination.

* * *

"What was that about?" Alec asks her when Izzy catches up with her brothers.

"A cute mundane with sight." Izzy says and grins at him. A _really_ cute mundane actually, her red hair had been eye catching enough, but the brief smile that had crossed her face during their conversation absolutely shone with sunlight. And that blush Izzy managed to coax out was utterly adorable.

She wondered how far she could have gotten it to spread with a bit more time on her hands.

If Izzy didn't have a mission to complete she'd probably have spent the night flirting. Maybe after they're done killing the shifter-demon she can go back and try that actually.

"Of course she was." Alec rolls his eyes and sends her a weak smirk but his shoulders grow tight and his eyes skitter away from hers. Izzy loses her smile and the only thing stopping her from grabbing her big brother in a tight hug and trying to start the conversation he's been avoiding for years now, is the fact that all it would do would make him run in the other direction.

They only spoke of it that once, right before he and Jace took their Parabatai oath, and never again. Izzy's attempts only ever ending in averted eyes and shamed expressions.

Sometimes she could scream with the frustration of it.

She doesn't understand why he so easily accepts her for everything she is, why when she was thirteen and terrified he held her in his arms and told her that liking both boys and girls was okay, but still can't seem to accept himself. Sometimes she really hates their world for what its done to Alec.

"C'mon hermano, lets kill some demons." She grabs him by the elbow as they follow Jace into the club and briefly squeezes his arm instead. He doesn't look back at her, but he doesn't pull away either and Izzy takes it for the victory it is.

 _'One day.'_ Izzy silently promises herself, _'One day he'll be ready.'_

And when that day comes she'll stand between him and their parents if she has to, she'll stand between him and anyone that would dare try hurt him with their hatred. After all, she knows Alec would do the same for her.

And until then she'll support him in the only ways he lets her.

* * *

The club is filled to the brim with people so for a few moments Clary doesn't know where to look for the mysterious girl named Isabelle she'd just met. The blaring beat of the music envelops her senses in stark contrast to the subdued one she had just left behind outside. She twists on the heels of her sneakers in both directions, uncertain, when the bright flash of a white wig catches her eye.

At once Clary follows, twisting between the bodies of the dancing people around her, trying to catch up.

She barely hears the music now, its been replaced by a hypnotic sort of buzzing that's filling up her mind until there's nothing in the world as important as crossing the club floor and finding the answers to the questions she doesn't even know to ask.

She feels goosebumps on the back of her neck, and it's not from the cold, the air is actually too warm having passed through too many lungs to be anything but, the room thick with the scent of sweat and alcohol.

Clary sees Isabelle and her two companions passing the bouncer guarding the entrance to what she assumes is the VIP area and doesn't even stop to think before she's bought herself an entrance with a lie too.

She stops in her tracks when she's in however. Her breath leaving her in one stuttery exhale and eyes jumping around the room uncertain where to land first.

Isabelle's on the stage, her wig and the dark coat abandoned on the ground exposing the white leather dress and beautiful flowing locks of black hair, she's dancing with the kind of self assured confidence Clary doesn't think she could conjure up for herself even in her own dreams. If Clary though she was gorgeous _before_ … her fingers itch for a chance to draw her.

Maybe exactly like this.

Isabelle Lightwood looks like a goddess, tattoos covering her skin in symbols Clary doesn't know the source of, her smile so sharp it could cut someone to pieces and her eyes alight with something akin to wildfire. Clary's momentarily struck sure she'd happily burn looking into them.

But she doesn't have more than a second to be enchanted before everything else that's happening around her registers.

Because suddenly there's a blade in the hands of the blond guy and he's moving it toward the back of a woman in a purple dress.

"Look out!' Clary screams and moves before her mind catches up with her. She shoves the guy away from the defenseless woman in front of him before she even has time to really get scared.

The next moments are a blur. More people are fighting around her, there's the sound of a whip hitting flesh. She's fallen on the ground, her knee scraping against the floor with a sharp pain. The glowing blade is in her hands in one moment and through the stomach of a person the next, she's looking in their eyes as they die and vanish into nothing. And then she's running.

Oh god, she just killed someone.

The buzzing from before has turned into an electric current whiting out any thought but that one. The terror has finally caught up. She runs into someone shoulder first and apologizes but barely sees them.

 _'I killed someone. I killed someone. I killed someone.'_

She wants her mom.

* * *

Izzy deals with the last demon and then follows the eyes of her brothers to the fleeing form of the pretty mundane from before. Except… she saw the redhead picking up Jace's Seraph blade, she saw as it lit up in her hands, the young woman she took for a mundane with the Sight was not a mundane at all it seems.

But no Shadowhunter would have reacted like that to killing a demon.

Something here didn't add up and if she knows her older brother at all he'll be-

"Jace! Follow her!" Alec bites out at once.

-ordering one of them to track her down immediately.

Izzy pouts a bit at not being the one chosen, but they all know Jace to be too impatient for the battle aftermaths anyway.

She turns her attention to Jace and immediately catches the fascinated look on his face. Well that just wouldn't do at all, she saw the beautiful girl first and all due respect to the feminist in her but some things just have to be said.

"Dibs, Jace."

"What? I wasn't-"

Izzy raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

"Ugh. Fine." Jace rolls his eyes at her and Izzy smirks a silent victory.

* * *

A bit tussled, sunrise red hair falling across a pillow makes for a very attractive picture, and Izzy makes a note to herself that she'd like to see that again under much better circumstances at some point in the future.

Because the girl unconscious after demon venom poisoning wasn't quite the way Izzy would have preferred it to happen, and the infirmary bed wasn't quite the place she'd have chosen.

She sits down beside her, leaning closer with the intention to check if her temperature has gone down enough or if they should consider drawing another iratze to be safe, when their new guest awakens and promptly and rather painfully connects their foreheads.

"Ow." izzy says with a grin and smiles even wider at the girl's shocked stare.

"I know you." She wispers. "Wait… what happened?"

"Yes, we met outside Pandemonium earlier." Izzy says and then continues, because though usually she'd be a bit offended at being forgotten, under the circumstances she can forgive it. "I'm Iz-"

"Isabelle Lightwood. I remember." The girl interrupts and shakes her head.

Izzy smiles, pleased.

"You on the other hand," Izzy says and slowly moves a red curl away from the other girl's brow with her fingers "didn't actually introduce yourself hermosa."

"I'm Clary. Fray. I'm Clary Fray." She says stumbling over her words a bit and blushing.

Izzy remembers her thought from earlier tonight and her answering grin is maybe a bit dirtier than is entirely appropriate, but going by the slightly stunned expression on her face she somehow doesn't think Clary quite minds.

* * *

From there things unravel so quickly Clary barely keeps up. A whole new world blooms before her, and it's both more ugly and more beautiful than the many fictional fantasy novels she used to read with Simon.

And sometimes she almost wishes she could go back to the lie of the mundane world.

But those thoughts never last, especially after she gets her mother back.

Her life with her mother and Luke used to be simple. There were no demonic brothers, no wars, no Claves with outdated laws and a horrific lack of morals.

But…

She turns around in bed and slides her arm over the middle of the most stunningly beautiful and bravest person Clary has ever met, - and she's met quite a few, - her eyes drink in the content smile on the sleeping face in front of her and her chest fills up with wonder and love.

There was no Izzy in that other life.

And no old dreams could ever be worth losing what the two of them had fought for and built together.

"Go back to sleep cariña, it's too early for you to think so loud." Izzy says in a sleepy mumble and then pulls Clary closer until her head rests atop her chest and over her heart.

"Okay." Clary says closing her eyes and thanking whatever fate or angel made her take back that step which put her in Izzy's path and had them collide.


End file.
